Documenting the search for my Stone and Wright ancestors and relatives

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At long last, the results (kit 339737, http://www.danstone.info/wrightdna.htm) have come back of the Y-DNA 12 test of the Oyster Bay Wright family descendant that I and fellow Wright researcher, Diane E. Wright (descendant of Capt. Peter Wright), worked so hard to locate. Even though the current test results are just for twelve markers, it looks like a few long-standing questions can finally start to be answered:

1) Are the direct paternal lines of the Oyster Bay Wright family and the Flushing Wright family closely related, as they are purported to be in some books?

It looks like they are not closely related judging from the DNA evidence. Even at just the most basic test level of twelve markers, the DNA signatures between the Oyster Bay Wright descendants and the Flushing Wright descendants show a difference of four to six steps. According to Family Tree DNA’s information, this difference is simply too great for these two lines to be related within a genealogical timeframe (back to roughly 1400 AD). Instead, the odds greatly favor that the two lines have not shared a common male ancestor within thousands of years.

This does not preclude the possibility of an undocumented adoption or other non-paternity event having taken place in any of the lines tested, nor does it discount the fact that the two lines are related through the many intermarriages which took place between descendants of the two early Long Island Wright families.

Further testing, including upgrading this latest test result to sixty-seven markers, will be helpful to be certain in confirming these results, but the lineage of this latest tester looks to be very solid, so I’d be rather surprised if future testing shows anything different.

2) Is the paternal ancestral line of Gabriel Wright closely related to the Oyster Bay Wright family?

For the same reasons as outlined above in the answer to question one, the paternal ancestral line of Gabriel Wright is not closely related to the Oyster Bay Wright family. Instead, the paternal ancestral line of Gabriel Wright looks to be very closely related to the Flushing Wright family, although the specific connection has not yet been discovered. This will be a great help in my research going forward, as it lets me know I can safely discount the Oyster Bay line from further consideration in trying to determine Gabriel Wright‘s ancestral family.

3) Are Gideon and Hezekiah Wright (brothers who fought with the British in North Carolina during the Revolutionary War) the sons of John Wright (1704 – 1750), and the second great grandsons of Peter Wright of Oyster Bay?

Significant research by Kay Haden has previously called into question the accuracy of Gideon and Hezekiah Wright being attributed as sons of John Wright (1704 – 1750). The DNA evidence now seems to support her conclusion that they are not descended from the Oyster Bay Wright family. Instead, it looks like they may posssibly be descended from the Flushing Wright family, although further testing is needed to confirm this hypothesis.

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The next step will be to refine the current Oyster Bay twelve marker test results to sixty-seven markers to be more certain of the results. If anyone wishes to contribute to this project, or if any documented Oyster Bay Wright direct paternal line descendants or documented Capt. Peter Wright (1740 – 7 Jun 1821 Shaftsbury, Benington County, Vermont) direct paternal line descendants come across this post and are interested in testing, please contact me.

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I have made changes to my family history website (http://www.danstone.info), not the least of which is adding some photos. It has taken awhile for me to make photos available, as I wanted to exclude photos of living people and needed to come up with an easy to manage way for doing so. After much experimentation, I have finally come up with a system that seems to do exactly what I hoped to accomplish. Now that I have the system in place, I will gradually start adding more of the family photos I have accumulated. I would welcome any family related photos or documents anyone has that they would like to make available to be displayed on my website.

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It has been quite awhile since I last posted. There has been much activity with my genealogy research, and I need to be better about documenting my progress through this blog. Here are some of the new developments:

1) My dad, mom, and paternal grandmother have taken the Ancestry DNA autosomal test. My dad and mom’s test results came back late last week, and my grandma’s should be coming back any day now. Even though I’ve had their results for only a few days, I can already see some of the big benefits to having their results to use in conjunction with mine. It makes it very easy to narrow down which line(s) to examine to try to locate the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) I may share with a match. It also allows for the use of some very handy tools for working with and comparing matches, such as gedmatch.com and Jeff Snavely’s AncestryDNA Chrome Extension.

2) I have located a descendant of Hosea Wright and Sarah Ladd Crew who is taking the Y-DNA test so that the link from my Hiram Wright to that Hosea Wright can be verified. Based on the number of autosomal matches my mom has to members of the Crew family who have connections to Sarah’s line, I will be very surprised if the results of this Y-DNA test do not show a match.

3) My maternal grandma’s brother was able to provide me with several bits of information which provide additional details to family events, as well as some potential new angles to explore in the search for additional Hill ancestors. He will be taking the Ancestry DNA autosomal test as well.

4) I have had several cousins, and potential cousins, contact me because of genealogy information I’ve posted at my website (www.danstone.info), and/or the FamilySearch.org Family Tree, GEDmatch.com, and WikiTree.com sites. These contacts are proving to be very beneficial, and are sources of new information as well as giving me new leads to explore.

5) I have updated my Wright DNA page (http://www.danstone.info/wrightdna.htm) as I continue to try to sort out how my line connects with the Wright line of Flushing, Long Island, New York and/or the Wright line of Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York. Based on the Wright Y-DNA matches of my uncle, along with the Wright autosomal matches of me and my mom, my current hypothesis is that the Flushing and Oyster Bay lines are actually related, but I’m still working to try to prove this. My hypothesis of a relationship between the Flushing and Oyster Bay Wright lines differs with what some other researchers have concluded, so I’m gathering as much information as possible and proceeding cautiously with my examination of the data.

6) My several month old hypothesis of a connection between my Stone line and the line of Phillip Stein (http://www.crewfamily.com/descendants_of_philipp_stein.htm) may finally have a possibility for some scientific backing, based on an autosomal match my dad has. The MRCA seems to be John Sebastian Stein, but much more examination is needed to be certain. Ideally, as I examine my dad’s list of matches further, I hope to locate matches with other Stein descendants to further support the possibility of the connection to the Stone line.